


Friends Don't Know the Way You Taste

by lucymonster



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Auradon is a dystopia and the protagonists only half-realise it, Dreams, Drunk Texting, F/F, Future Fic, Minor Ben/Carlos De Vil, Mutual Pining, Sex, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-13 02:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21236837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: 'You did your best, Mal,' Evie says. ‘Bringing down the barrier was only the first step in healing Auradon. Of course there’s more work to do. But we can’t lose hope. We all need to–’‘Need to what? Believe in the inevitable triumph of good over evil?’It turns out life looks different on the other side of the fairytale ending.





	Friends Don't Know the Way You Taste

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alana/gifts).

High walls. Barred gates. Piles of razor wire, platinum-white and tangled, like a bad home bleach job bristling with split ends. Any villain would be proud to make their home inside this fortress. Past the guard towers and the blinking lights of surveillance cameras, Evie can see the old sign planted at the base of the steps: _ THE MUSEUM of CULTURAL HISTORY_.

After the last break-in, the desperate heritage council closed the museum off from public access. No one passes its barricades now without a signed permission letter from King Ben.

Evie’s footsteps quicken, dagger-heels clicking on the pavement as she resets her course towards the castle. She shouldn’t have come this far. Her motorcycle is parked back at the bay, near the Isle bridge, and her calves ache from the long walk that would have better been made in a pair of cute flats. But she’d wanted to see her old stamping grounds around Auradon Prep, and she’d wanted to look as polished as possible for her appearance at the royal court. Her precarious shoes match her precarious mood and add six inches to her willowy height. Despite the pain, they’re the only thing about today that doesn’t make her feel sick.

Around an hour from now, Evie is due to stand before the throne and argue that her villain outreach centre deserves another round of funding. She has a briefcase full of papers recording miserable stats and meagre progress. A handful of client case studies showing the positive outcomes of affirmative action, and a handful more that she can spin as positive with some judicious redactions and careful reframing. An earnest manifesto on the importance of never giving up, of refusing to let financial straits and bad PR interfere with the vision of an integrated Auradon.

(They’ve walled off the school campus, too. Nobody’s pleased about it. Security checks chew through hours of valuable learning time and the rose gardens no longer get enough sun.)

As the castle looms nearer, the stares from fellow pedestrians grow sharper and less veiled. Villains are still a rare sight on the clean streets that make up the kingdom’s heartland. Some of the more rebellious heroes’ kids have taken to dyeing bright streaks in their hair and studding their jackets in a nod to VK fashion, which gives opinion columnists plenty to wring their hands about. But the well-bred, well-fed children of the kingdom are clothed in social swaddling that stays stubbornly intact beneath their layers of artfully shredded denim. There’s no faking it. Evie’s bubblegum perfume never quite masks the brackish Isle whiff that wafts along wherever she goes.

Mal should be here with her today. Evie never really expected her to show – but then, Evie didn’t survive sixteen years on the Isle by letting bad odds and bleak futures dampen her outlook. She’d hoped.

(There’s graffiti on the shopfront walls along Royal Road. _ Good crops don’t grow from bad seeds, _ reads one slogan beneath a thin layer of drying cover paint. _ Go back where you came from_, reads another, less subtle.)

Evie had hoped, but the day has come and Mal isn’t here. There’s no hand in hers, squeezing reassurance. No whisper of confidence in her ear. No arms to fall into after it’s over. She’s alone.

She’ll win the funding anyway. Her kids at the outreach centre need her to.

* * *

‘When confronted with these allegations, the Fairy Godmother’s only response was “Bibbidi, bobbidy!”. Whether that answer will satisfy her critics at the Tribunal remains to be seen.’ Finished reading aloud, Mal tears the page from the _ Daily Pumpkin _ and lays it across the cage floor. ‘There you go, mother. I thought you’d enjoy that.’

The lizard’s tongue darts out, sampling a corner of the paper. If Maleficent is pleased by the news that her arch-rival has gotten caught in a public scandal surrounding corruption on the Auradon Prep school board then she doesn’t show it. Or maybe she does. Mal’s bedside table is piled high with unopened books on proper reptile handling and social behaviour. Maybe those slit pupils mean happiness.

‘Bring me another beer, Mal,’ Hades calls from the living room.

‘I think it’s true,’ Mal tells her mother. ‘It’s always true with our fairytale heroes. It’s always about who knows who, or who did a favour for whose nephew’s second cousin’s boss one time. The only real surprise is that anyone in the media actually cares enough to tell the story.’

Maleficent swishes her tail, eyes unblinking.

‘Mal! Beer!’

‘Get it yourself,’ Mal yells over her shoulder, before turning back to the cage. ‘I mean, it’s all a popularity contest, isn’t it? You tried to teach me that once. Or twice. Maybe a few times. Honestly, I used to wish you’d shut up about it. It’s all fun and games until you’re the one who’s not invited to the party.’

A loud creak of couch springs and a louder creak of joints is the fanfare that tells Mal a god has entered the room. ‘Listen here, you ungrateful brat,’ says Hades. ‘I’ve told you before: you’re living rent-free under my roof, so you can damn well do what I ask when I ask it.’

‘And I’ve told _ you _you can go to hell,’ says Mal. She’s lying on her stomach on the kitchen floor in front of the lizard cage, and she kicks her heels up behind her and doesn’t turn around. ‘Oh wait, you can’t, can you? That bracelet on your ankle stops you from using your powers to open the underworld. Such a shame. Must be frustrating.’

For a moment, she thinks Hades might hit her. There’s a part of Mal that hopes he will. It would feel _ so good _to have a new reason to be angry. But he doesn’t lash out, or even rise to the bait – just steps over her, sighing from the diaphragm and jangling about the ankles, and opens the cooler for another bottle of Mother Gothel’s Extra-Bitter Floral IPA. ‘You were closer to the fridge,’ he says.

‘Yeah, well. You needed the walk.’

‘I’ve never needed the walk. This sort of thing is why I used to keep minions.’

‘And if you’d kept your minions a bit quieter, you wouldn’t be in this situation.’ For a while after he crossed the bridge, her father had been a smash hit on the kingdom’s newly invigorated worship scene. His gospel of chaos and righteous self-interest had called to the people on the fringes of society, the fruitsellers and lower-ranked soldiers toiling in obscurity outside the castle’s glistening parapets. Hades preached hedonism to the crowds while Auradon’s elite congratulated themselves on their new religious tolerance. But then that business on Olympus happened, and the court found that, after all, Hades’s followers weren’t a peaceful minority religion but a radical cult with anarchist leanings. Life changed overnight. 

That’s the thing about kingdoms, Mal has learned: with one overworked man calling all the shots, life often changes overnight.

‘A drink for my charming wife as well?’ Hades pries the cap off his bottle and flicks it through the bars of the cage. It lands neatly beside the water dish. A few stray beer droplets glisten on the rim.

Maleficent’s tongue darts out again.

‘You’ll poison her,’ Mal snaps, sticking her fingers through the bars to retrieve the cap before its residue can damage her mother’s reptilian kidneys. She doesn’t need her books to tell her lizards shouldn’t have alcohol.

‘She’d do the same to me. Careful, she’s going to bite you.’

‘She’s not going to – ow!’

‘By the way,’ says Hades, stepping back over Mal as she sucks her bleeding finger, ‘your friend called earlier. The one with the annoying voice. I told her the usual story – being a disgraced ex-ruler is a lot of hard work, so no, you don’t have time for a play date.’

Something clenches in Mal’s chest. ‘Her name’s Evie, Dad.’

‘Sure. I’ll try to remember that next time I’m telling her to fuck off on your behalf.’

Silence falls after Hades resumes his throne on the couch. Maleficent laps up blood and beer from the bottle cap; if she’s thinking anything, she doesn’t say it.

‘Here’s something you never taught me, Mother,’ Mal says. ‘What happens when they _ do _invite you to the party, but you just can’t bring yourself to go?’

No answer comes. Even a half-drunk lizard can see it’s a stupid question.

* * *

By the time Evie leaves the castle, papers stuffed in random order back inside her briefcase, it’s no longer just her feet that ache. Stress and weariness throb in her temples, and she’s so focused on making it back to the bridge that she doesn’t see the friendly smile until she’s almost past him and he’s calling out after her. ‘Evie. Hey, Evie!’

‘Carlos?’ From the dark roots of his frazzled hair to the creases of his well-worn boots, he’s as scruffy as he ever was and as much a shock to the city’s prim residents. Evie pulls him into a hug.

He’s so warm. She’d almost forgotten that.

‘Carlos, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Aphelothia.’ Last Evie heard, King Ben had been hard pressed to find anyone willing to go near Olympus since that mess with Hades and his followers. Carlos had volunteered to help with cleanup. He’d said: _ They don’t meet many VKs out there in the fiefdoms. If all they ever see of us is people like Hades, you can’t blame them for hanging onto prejudice. We need to show them that we want what’s best for Auradon, too. _

Carlos’s freckled cheeks curl into a grin. ‘Why should I be in Aphelothia? Place is clean as a whistle. The poison sludge is out of the waterways, we’ve shrunk all the fish back to their natural size, and the acid rain is a nice safe 5.5 on the pH scale.’

‘When did you get back?’

‘Just now. I came ahead of the royal convoy. I really wanted to make it on time for your appeal – sorry I’m late.’

Tears well up in Evie’s eyes. She blinks them back furiously, conscious of her luxe lash-lengthening but distinctly non-waterproof mascara. ‘You remembered my appeal.’

‘Of course I remembered. How could I forget? Evie, what you’re doing here is so important. I’m…’ Carlos shuffles his feet. ‘I’m really proud of you.’

They find a private booth inside the _ Headless Horse, _ one of the many villain-owned watering holes that have sprung up along the main street in the last few years. The good people of Auradon are traditionally wine drinkers or teetotallers; spirits are an Isle import. But the locals have developed stronger tastes since integration, and bars are one of the few business ventures that give newer Auradonians a foot in the door. Evie buys a Mali-Boo Sunset for herself and a virgin Pumpkin Fright for Carlos, who can drink her under the table but who hasn’t quite yet cleared Auradon’s arbitrary twenty-one year age of majority. The Horseman delivers their order with a disembodied hat tip and a dish of complimentary salted peanuts.

For a while, they talk about everything and nothing. Carlos tells Evie about some of his extracurricular adventures in Aphelothia. (‘So many heads! I thought Cerberus was just another one of my mother’s stories, like Pongo the Ripper or the Dalmatian Under the Bed.’) Evie talks Carlos through her plans for the funding she just won: a new youth centre where VKs and native Auradonians can get to know each other on safe neutral ground. (‘The important thing is to make them feel like they’re part of a community so they’re motivated to adapt. You remember how it was with us when we first came here.’) They gossip about Jay, off exploring somewhere beyond the Great Wall with Gil and Lonnie. (‘Yeah,’ says Carlos, shrugging, ‘I thought it was a weird combination too. At least they seem to be having fun, if the mountaintop selfies are anything to go by.’)

But it can’t go on forever. Evie can see Carlos circling the topic, drawing closer with each new conversational foray, and no matter how much she wants to avoid it, at some point something has to give. Eventually Carlos’s fine thread of tact reaches its end, and she can almost hear the empty spool dropping to the ground as he asks with awkward bluntness: ‘So, anyway. Have you heard from Mal lately?’

Evie takes a large gulp of her cocktail. ‘Not much, no.’

‘I heard she’s gone back to live with Hades on the Isle.’

‘She always missed it there. At least it’s not closed off anymore. Less crowding, and the produce vendors can get in from the mainland.’

For a moment, Carlos’s eyes drift over Evie’s glass. He’s never liked coconut flavoured anything, but she suspects he’s envying the ethanol content and wishing his own Pumpkin Fright were something stronger. What would the king’s oversight bureau make of it if Evie were to get caught helping an old friend dodge the legal drinking age? Would they still license her to work with at-risk kids? ‘I don’t think Hades is the best person to be around right now.’ Carlos chews the inside of his cheek. ‘For anyone, but especially for Mal. Some of the things Ben has told me…’

If Evie were her old self – the self of a few years ago, who would have been happy to pour Carlos an illegal shot of spirits and then use the rest of the bottle to spike the school drinking fountain – she might use the mention of Ben to turn the conversation back against its instigator. Ever since Mal left her place on the throne by Ben’s side, Carlos has been spending a surprising number of hours at the palace. _ He’s a good friend to the king, _ she’s heard some of the less worldly courtiers gush amongst themselves. _ So loyal, so devoted. Sometimes he even sleeps over at the royal residence. _ She could bring it up now, for the satisfaction of distracting Carlos from Mal and making him blush to boot. 

Instead she holds her tongue, and draws swirls in the layer of dew on her glass. ‘I don’t think Mal cares what Ben tells anyone. Hades is her dad, and right now she just wants to be with family.’

‘We’re her family,’ Carlos says.

‘We used to be.’ The words taste sour, so Evie washes them down with another gulp of liquor. _ Family _isn’t the only thing she ever wanted from Mal, not by a long shot. But it’s too late to be choosy about that. She’d take sisterhood over the nothing she has now. ‘We’re not in high school anymore, Carlos. We’re not on the streets. Life’s gotten more complicated, and Mal’s priorities have changed. Ours have too, haven’t they? Once, we would have chased her all the way back to the Isle. Now we’re all too busy with work.’

‘Work to bring peace to the kingdom and help our Isle neighbours reintegrate.’ His smile has flattened out; his voice is uncharacteristically bitter. ‘It’s not the kind of work you get to walk away from just because you want to visit your dad. Mal was supposed to be leading the charge, and instead we’re all drowning while she hides from her responsibility.’

Part of Evie wants to defend Mal from Carlos’s outburst. Another part wants to join in. She compromises by sucking on her glace cherry and saying nothing.

* * *

Alone in the back room of Hades’s den that passes for a private bedroom, Mal takes a pair of cutting shears to her neglected hair.

She cuts it to the shoulder, then the jaw, then the ears. Watching her dull locks fall to the floor is viscerally satisfying for reasons she can’t quite put a name to. She imagines leaving the Isle and appearing in front of her old subjects – not as a disgraced former queen, but as a confident new woman with a punk-rock shag cut. She’ll dye over the purple and go jet black, or maybe a blinding ash grey.

When the shears reach her eyeline, she stops and examines her work in detail. It’s a disaster. The layers are uneven, clinging to her heart-shaped face and making her forehead look impossibly wide. Short bits stick up at ugly angles. With a stab of shame that only half relates to her ill-thought-out haircut, Mal whispers the words of a remembered spell and tosses her head until her style goes back to normal.

Faded purple. Ratty ends. It still needs to change. Dizzy’s salon has long since shut down, but the rush of magic is a thrill more potent than the sharpest whiff of peroxide from a hairdresser’s basin. Another enchantment spreads amethyst ink from her roots down the length of her hair. What hasn’t she tried before? Red? Doesn’t suit her complexion. Natural brown? Too boring. Mal tries balayage and subtle highlights and thick, blocky streaks through honeyish brunette. She tries pastels. Neon. Five different shades of blonde. One command makes her hair fall in loose curls with dip-dyed tips. Another makes it straight again, rib length, black roots blending into a rich dark blue.

Blue. Beautiful, tearful blue. Mal goes still. The words of the next spell falter on her lips.

The phone in her pocket still has Evie saved as a favourite contact, never mind how long it’s been since Mal actually used her number. 

Most Auradonians don’t know (or, if they do know, they know better than to discuss aloud) that their communications are monitored through a top secret branch of the king’s security bureau. In the years since integration there have been too many plots, too many protests, too many angry Audreys, too many aspiring Maleficents. Nothing Mal and Evie have to discuss could be classed as a threat to public safety. Privacy doesn’t mean much for its own sake, either, after growing up under the less-than-benevolent watchful gaze of the Isle’s various gang informant networks. Deep down, the surveillance doesn’t register with Mal as anything sinister or out of the ordinary. But she’s been dwelling on it anyway, because the alternative – picking up the phone and calling Evie – strikes more fear into her heart than a whole army of the black suits who used to address her as _ your Majesty. _

If she ever does pick it up, she’s not sure what she’ll say. Maybe: ‘My hair’s been giving me grief, and I need your opinion on the best new shade for my skin tone.’

Maybe: ‘I’ve been depression-eating so much that my favourite dresses are getting tight and I need your help reinforcing the buttons before they pop.’

Maybe: ‘I didn’t know it would be like this. I thought we’d bring down the barrier and everyone would be happy, but when I realised how bad the situation was getting, I panicked and abandoned my throne and I’ve been to ashamed to face you ever since. I never should have been queen in the first place. I was a fucking kid when they crowned me.’

Maybe: ‘I thought school was going to last forever. When they said we’d grow apart, I laughed.’

Screwing up her eyes, Mal forces out another spell. The blue hair is gone, replaced by powdery purple-pink that hangs in a dead straight curtain past her shoulders. Blunt bangs tickle her brow. She remembers how much she loved this style last time she wore it, how warm and satisfied she felt after all those hours in Dizzy’s chair. How surprised Evie was by the new look when she found Mal in her old hideout on the Isle. How Evie had breathed in the fresh ammonia scent of it as they held each other close, thinking they were saying goodbye, that Mal was done with Auradon for good.

‘You’ve been hitting the spellbooks again,’ Hades says later on, when Mal emerges from her room with sleek hair rippling like a curtain. ‘You should be careful with those things. Our benevolent overlords don’t like the common folk using magic.’ He points at his restrictive ankle bracelet, evidence of the Crown’s displeasure with his sorcery.

‘You were trying to unleash Armageddon,’ Mal says tiredly. ‘No one cares if I use a spell to make my hair nice.’

Maybe what she should really say is: ‘Evie, I _ wanted _it to last forever. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You made me feel so safe and loved that I took it all for granted, and now it’s gone and I have no idea how to ask for it back. I don’t even know if you feel the same way anymore.’

* * *

‘For the last time,’ Carlos says patiently, ‘you’re not riding across the bridge in this state. There’s plenty of space on my couch until you’ve sobered up.’

They’re walking through a quiet suburban back street, Evie leaning heavily on Carlos’s arm as she totters barefoot on the pavement. Her heels got too hard to walk in after the seventh or eighth drink. ‘But what if the vandals find my bike?’ It seems important.

‘If you can just remember where you parked, I’ll go back and collect it once I’ve dropped you off at mine.’

She can’t remember where she parked.

They’re outside Carlos’s house; the walk there is a blur. She’s stumbling through the door. Falling giddy on the couch. The resentment that’s been brewing inside her all night feels at once numbly distant and painfully immediate, and while Carlos pours her a glass of water in the kitchen, she taps out a message with clumsy thumbs. 

_ Mal I miss you _

‘Drink up,’ Carlos says. ‘You’ll thank me in the morning.’

She picks up her phone again once he’s gone. 

_ Mal,, I lvoe you please talk to me again. I dont know what why you didn’t _

She hits send. Then, satisfied that she’s made her point, she closes her eyes and passes out.

* * *

Drunk texts have an implicit expiry date. After the morning-after window of opportunity, replying becomes increasingly awkward. _ Hi Evie, sorry I didn’t see your message. Hope your hangover got better … three days ago now, or whatever. _

Mal doesn’t dare hit send. 

But it’s getting harder to ignore her loneliness. At night, if she doesn’t manage to pilfer a sleeping tablet from Hades, her dreams turn vivid and she lives through scenes from a past that makes her ache. All her escapades with Evie on the Isle – was life really so bad back then? What used to look like a prison compound feels in retrospect more like a secure fortress, a place for the VKs to hide and live their lives in peace away from the strict rules and seething judgement of their hero neighbours. Mal tore it down without a moment’s thought. Now instead of playing outside, the children hurry home after school in case another protest gets out of control. Now Auradon City, which looked glossy and gorgeous from across the water, feels claustrophobic despite its vastly greater land mass. Now instead of fading into the darkest reaches of memory, old grudges are alive and well and handed down from parent to child to play out in miniature on the playground at recess.

Mal dreams of roaming the streets with Evie. She dreams of braiding hair and swapping clothes and curling up for warmth together under the covers at night. She’s cold in her empty bed. She remembers how Evie’s skin used to smell, and how their bodies seemed to fit together like perfect halves of a whole as they held each other close.

(But never close enough. Bed was for sleeping in; _ best friends _is what they used to call each other, as if the words could begin to capture the frantic intensity of Mal’s love.)

She remembers wanting things she didn’t have a name for. Sex ed on the Isle was crude; instructional textbooks were light on the ground, and while porn was cheap and plentiful, it never showed the tenderness Mal ached for. Mal’s mother taught her cold self-sufficiency and Evie’s mother taught her the subtle art of catching princes. No one taught them what to do when the light caught Evie’s hair in just the right way and Mal thought her heart would burst from longing. No one taught Mal how to ask for what she needed.

She dreams of reaching out. Of catching those tresses and stroking, caressing, leaning all the way in to capture Evie’s plump lips in a kiss.

But no matter if they happen in Auradon or on the Isle, dreams have to end. Life has taught Mal that much. When she wakes she’s staring at a dim beige ceiling blotched with mold stains. Outside her door she can hear a hungover Hades stomping through the kitchen, ankle monitor jangling. He won’t have fed Maleficent, so Mal will have to get up and do it soon, dishing out wriggly mealworms from the bucket beside the sink. Another day in the life of a jaded nobody who used to be a queen.

A queen on the run from the uncleanable mess she made of her short-lived rule. Ironic, really, that she ended up making her hideout in squalor.

As she leaves the bedroom, Mal takes a quick glance at herself in the mirror. She’s a wreck, with chipped nails and greasy skin and under-eye bags that Evie and her indignant concealer pen would have made quick work of. But her _ hair. _ Her hair is still flawless from last night’s spell, hanging down her back in a rippling silky curtain.

Maybe it’s the thought of such a good hair day going to waste that tips her over.

Maybe shame and conscience are finally rearing their heads from beneath the muck.

Or maybe it’s the sound through her open door of Hades launching into what sounds like a heated argument with the lizard. Mal doesn’t want to be part of that.

She doesn’t want to hide forever.

Yes, she’s let everybody down. Yes, she’s betrayed the people who believed in her. But she also still has things to offer, even if one of those things is just a particularly stylish coif.

Even if one of those things is just an inadequate explanation and apology.

Her phone, when she unlocks it, is still open to Evie’s text. _ Hey, _ she writes back with stiff, reluctant thumbs. _ I’m sorry I’ve been off the grid so long. Let’s meet for coffee. _

* * *

For a moment, when she sees Mal waiting for her at the table in one of Auradon's obnoxiously cosy cafes, Evie almost loses heart. Mal doesn’t rise to hug her; she looks frozen to her seat, and for a while they sit awkwardly across from each other and pretend to be fixated by the half-page coffee menu.

Helplessly, Evie’s eyes are drawn to the line of her neck, her rosy lips, her delicate hands. She’s wearing her hair the way it was the last time she ran off to the Isle, and Evie’s sure it’s deliberate, but she’s also busy trying to calm her heart at the way Mal’s blouse parts at her cleavage and how milky-soft her skin looks above the collar. It’s so much, seeing her in the flesh like this after all that time apart. Evie had almost forgotten how it feels.

No, she hadn’t. Evie is incapable of forgetting anything about Mal. Distance has only made the feelings sharper.

This is her chance to make things right. After such a long stretch of isolation, she needs to play it cool. Needs to draw Mal out and pull free the wedge that’s been keeping them apart and avoid saying anything that might make Mal feel –

‘Nothing? All this time you’ve been hiding on the Isle, refusing to talk to me, and now you show up and you say _ nothing_?’

– defensive.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Mal. She sounds wary but not especially rattled. Evie can never maintain a temper for long. Mal knows that about her. ‘Really, Evie, thank you so much for coming to meet me today. I know I don’t deserve it.’

‘Just talk to me, Mal. We’ve been friends our whole lives. It’s so weird not to know what’s going on with you all of a sudden.’ _ Weird _is probably be the understatement of the century, but just because they’re off to a bad start doesn’t mean Evie has to abandon her initial goal of playing it cool.

She’s expecting it to take time. She’s not expecting Mal to start pouring her heart out all at once. But Mal does. 

‘I got scared, Evie. I tried so hard to be the queen Auradon needs, but everything kept going wrong. People were protesting in the streets. Ben was getting more distant every day. My own dad was tearing up Olympus, turning people into fish and fish into ship-eating giants and fuck knows what else before security brought him in line. Villains and heroes are at each other’s throats like they never were in exile and that was _ all on me, _ because I didn’t think it through when I brought down the barrier.’

‘None of us thought,’ says Evie. ‘We just did our best. _ You _did your best, Mal.’ Voice sticking in her throat, she draws on the same speech she made to King Ben’s committee the other day. The speech that won her all that funding – the one Mal wasn’t there to hear. ‘Bringing down the barrier was only the first step in healing Auradon. Of course there’s more work to do. But we can’t lose hope. We all need to–’

‘Need to what? Believe in the inevitable triumph of good over evil?’

‘Well, believing helps. But showing up in the first place is a start.’

Mal looks wretched. Evie hates herself for it, but she can’t make her anger stop.

‘Auradon’s better off without me.’

It’s not anger. Not really. It’s something deeper, and it’s been brewing for so long that Evie hardly knows how to separate the feeling from every other thing that makes her herself. ‘And what about me, Mal? Where am I without you?’

‘Maybe you’re better off too. I know it doesn’t feel that way but … honestly, Evie, you have every right to be angry with me. I let you down.’ Mal’s giving her one of those teary looks. The one that has always made something in Evie’s heart go strange. ‘It’s just, when you look at it logically–’

‘Logically?’ Evie splutters. ‘It’s logic, is it, that made you run away?’

‘I was just trying to do what’s best for everyone.’

‘I don’t care about _ everyone. _ I’m the one who’s had to live without you. I wanted you so bad.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, Mal, you don’t get it. I _ wanted _you.’

Once the words are out of her mouth, there’s no taking them back. They hang in the air like iridescent spell-smoke and reflect off Mal’s eyes, clouding the flecked green so it’s hard to see what’s going on behind them.

‘Evie,’ is Mal’s only answer, and it comes out cracked.

But the walls holding Evie’s feelings back have cracked even deeper. The dam bursts. ‘It’s not about the Isle or Auradon or integration or any of it. You think it makes a difference to me if you’re sitting on the throne or not? Mal, your stepping down didn’t break the kingdom. The kingdom was already broken on the day it decided to put two sixteen-year-olds in charge. The kingdom was broken before either of us was born, when King Beast decided that the only way to maintain peace was to lock our parents in a festering ghetto and throw away the key. I’m killing myself every day trying to make this damaged world a better place, but I don’t need a queen to help me do it. I just need you.’ Evie pauses for breath. There’s a burning sensation in her tear ducts and her lungs. ‘Just you, Mal. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. And if we’re never anything more than friends then I’m okay with that, truly, I’m okay. But I can’t keep living my life like this, trying to pretend you’re not the most important thing in it.’

The silence stretches so long that Evie’s scared Mal will never reply. She shouldn’t have opened her stupid mouth. After such a long and painful separation, Mal probably wants to ease back into their friendship, to keep a safe distance, to let herself adjust. She doesn’t want Evie sobbing all over her and professing her love. Stupid. So _ stupid_. Her first and probably only chance to make things right between them and she’s blown it, and now Mal will probably –

Set down her menu.

Reach out across the table. 

Take Evie’s hand in both of hers.

She’s warm. Her palms are soft and dry, and she doesn’t say a word about Evie’s over-emotional clamminess.

‘Evie,’ Mal says. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’ Her thumb strokes gentle circles, and the tears that Evie was about to shed are suspended in her eyes, casting a watery haze over the world. ‘I had no good reason to turn my back on you like I did. I just felt so small and ashamed of myself, and I didn’t think I deserved to be surrounded by people who care about me.’ Another circle. Evie’s hands are tingling from her wrist down to the short rounded tips of her silvery blue manicure. ‘I didn’t think I deserved _ you. _I thought that once you saw how weak I was, how much of a mess I made of my life, you’d never be able to love me the way I–’

The word catches.

This isn’t something Isle life ever prepared them for. A word seldom spoken, an utter baring of the soul to the talons of the one person in the world with the greatest power to hurt you.

Mal never does manage to say it, but as their fingers lace together, Evie finds she doesn’t need her to.

* * *

They cross the bridge together, Mal perched on the back of Evie’s bike. There’s no spare helmet, and the sea breeze turns Mal’s loose hair wild, and she clings to Evie’s waist and breathes in the bubblegum scent of her mixed with saltwater.

It smells like home. Despite the excitement burning in Mal’s veins, she finds herself breathing slower and deeper, drinking in as much as she can and holding it greedily in her lungs.

They’re not going back to Mal’s. They’re not going back to Evie’s. By some miracle of mass migration and haphazard gentrification, their old hideout has stayed empty as the city around it falls into disuse. Mal throws a rock at the sign and leads Evie by the hand up the rusty scaffold stairs. There’s a fleeting moment on the threshold where it almost gets awkward, but then Evie – beautiful, courageous Evie, who has never flinched away from a challenge and who tackles every aspect of her life head on – tucks Mal’s tangled hair behind her ears and leans in for a kiss.

And once they start kissing, it’s impossible to stop. Mal’s fear melts away in a startled puff of air and she’s leaning into Evie, straining up to meet her lips, balanced on the tips of her toes with the whole world teetering beneath her. They make it to the bed underneath the looming wall of graffiti art that Mal remembers spraying onto the wall through tears and clouded judgement. It was Evie who showed up to rescue her then, too. It’s always been Evie. Mal hardly remembers having ever thought it could be otherwise.

Evie’s mouth tastes like vanilla lip balm, blood-hot and hungry as her tongue caresses Mal’s. Her hands are travelling, prying at the buttons of Mal’s dress with a seamstress’s skilled fingers – but she hesitates, and with her hands against Mal’s chest she whispers: ‘This is so new.’

‘You’ve seen me undressed before.’ Mal remembers each occasion with more clarity than she probably should, remembers turning away and biting her tongue and willing the flush not to show on her skin. Even before she knew a name for what she felt, Evie’s eyes always affected her just a bit too much.

‘That’s not what I mean. I just…’ Now Evie’s the one flushing. ‘I’ve never done this before, Mal.’

‘Me either,’ Mal admits. ‘We’ll figure it out together.’

They do. Sweat-slick and aching deep, they explore each other’s bodies in a giddy haze of want. Evie parts Mal’s legs, exposes her, eyes glassy as she parts Mal’s folds and circles her thumb around the tender bud in its nest of hair. Mal wonders, very briefly, if she should have enchanted her dark curls to match the pink tresses on her head. Then Evie pushes a finger inside her, and Mal doesn’t wonder anything at all.

Evie fucks her as deep as she can reach. Three fingers inside her and Mal still feels empty, frantic, frustrated, pulling Evie’s hair and clawing at her shoulders and murmuring plea after breathless plea. Evie bites Mal’s neck and sucks hard, leaving marks that Mal knows no concealer will be able to fully hide. She pictures herself parading the streets of Auradon, bruised dark around her throat and collar, freed from the burden of caring what they think of her. She arches her hips, grinds into Evie’s touch, and Evie rubs Mal’s clit with the heel of her hand while her other steals down between her own legs.

‘Don’t touch yourself,’ Mal says. Her voice has gone husky. She sounds nothing like herself and she doesn’t care, _ can’t _care, not with Evie’s hands on her like this. ‘I want to do it for you.’

‘Then do it.’ Evie’s voice has changed too. The unguarded need in it thrills Mal to her core.

But … ‘I’m still working that part out. I’m not sure I can do it right when you’re distracting me at the same time.’

Evie hides her laugh in the crook of Mal’s neck and keeps fingering her until Mal cries aloud. Improvising wildly, Mal nudges a thigh between Evie’s legs and urges her to grind, feeling heat and wetness on her skin.

When they’re done – when Mal has come apart in shivering spasms and brought Evie with her, gasping and moaning and sobbing for breath – they curl up on the bed together and hold each other closer than they’ve ever done before. The sun has set below the Isle’s horizon. Neither of them wants to get up to turn on the lights.

‘Mal,’ says Evie at last in the darkness. ‘Never leave me again, okay?’

Mal’s heart aches at the frank vulnerability in her voice. ‘I won’t. I promise, I won’t. This is us now. You and me. Together.’

‘Life isn’t going to get any easier.’

‘I know.’

She does know. What Mal doesn’t know is if she’s ever going to be ready to _ face _life the way it is right now, if she’s ever going to be able to make sense of the miserable life she lived pre-integration or the ongoing trauma and confusion she’s faced since the barrier came down. She may never have the courage Evie has to keep chipping away at the problem every day, working to change the situation from the inside so that subsequent generations of VKs can have a better life. She may never have more for herself than a deadbeat dad with a failed doomsday cult and a lizard mother whose expectations she has given up on meeting. An ex-husband she can’t look in the eye. A kingdom full of ex-subjects who all rightly blame her for the chaos their lives have descended into.

But she’ll always have Evie. Mal is here – _ they’re _ here, just the two of them – and that’s all Evie needs from her. That much, at least, she can do.

She wraps her arm tighter around Evie’s waist and lets her eyes drift closed.


End file.
